Biggest Surprises at Des Moines

[ImproperCharacter]

Miami A and B have been interchangeable all year....the B team was originally the one with Gus Lazares and the A team had Matt Ciccone....then the A team had some personnel changes over winter break and  they really flipped as the "A" and "B" teams...so the 8th place team at national that split with UCLA A and Furman A was the Lazares team and ultimately the "A" team...BTW that Miami squad loses no one to graduation and comes back intact next year with Lazares, Jeffcott, and Harrison as the attorney bank

geez... Miami must have a lot of talent to go around. I have played Miami a number of times and talked with some people on their teams, but I don't understand their team structure at all. Do they stack an A team  at the beginning of the year and not change later or do they purposefully keep split stacked teams? Why was Lazares on the B team at the beginning of the year? He was the double closer on the A team last year. Why don't they put Ciccone and Lazares on the same team? So many questions and so few answers... (that was Miami's defense theme, by the way).

 It's not just attorneys either. The 8th place team had the best Fran Martin I saw this year and he plays a great Berkshire too. I think his name is Alex but I don't know his last name. The honorable mention team has Pavel Gurevich who won an all American this year. Why weren't they on the same team?


On another note, what other teams aren't losing many people to graduation?

[Nur Rauch]

geez... Miami must have a lot of talent to go around. I have played Miami a number of times and talked with some people on their teams, but I don't understand their team structure at all. Do they stack an A team  at the beginning of the year and not change later or do they purposefully keep split stacked teams? Why was Lazares on the B team at the beginning of the year? He was the double closer on the A team last year. Why don't they put Ciccone and Lazares on the same team? So many questions and so few answers... (that was Miami's defense theme, by the way).

 It's not just attorneys either. The 8th place team had the best Fran Martin I saw this year and he plays a great Berkshire too. I think his name is Alex but I don't know his last name. The honorable mention team has Pavel Gurevich who won an all American this year. Why weren't they on the same team?


On another note, what other teams aren't losing many people to graduation?

It's as MockGrad just explained... Miami A and B are interchangeable. In other words their teams are equally stacked, in theory. In 2008 the team with almost all seniors placed behind their other team. It's like with Virginia in that calling one their A team is misleading because both teams are supposed to have great amounts of talent.

[MiaWUCU]

On another note, what other teams aren't losing many people to graduation?

Columbia 514 graduates no one.

[12 yr old prodigy]

Columbia 514 graduates no one.

How old is Buchanan Vines? How many years has he competed?

[TheHamborgler]

The deal on Miami is this-

We never had any solid policy on how the teams were composed. Some years we would split stack at the begining of the year and then restack before 2nd semester, some years the A team would be together from day 1 and stay together and some years we ran multiple teams that were all interchangable. It all depended on whatever the coaches thought was best for any given year.

This year 993 was made up of all the returning members of last years A and B teams. 992 was made up the members of last year's 995 (the team that qualified out of Louisville for silver but had to forfeit because Miami won 3 bids.) I watched both of the teams in Des Moines and they are both pretty sick.

Gus and Cicconne aren't on the same atty bank primarily because they don't need to be. 993's attorney bank is Gus, All-American Tommy Jeffcott and Kevin Harrison (who has one of the best natural mock minds I have ever seen.) So they are pretty set. 992 has Cicconne, Scott Lippert and Emily Homel who aren't anything to shake a stick at either.

The witnesses they are returning are also pretty unbelievable. They still have Alex Bluebond (the Berkshire/Martin mentioned earlier in the thread), Jackie Sherrick (who played our Rev. Darrow last year and had 20 ranks at CUBAIT), and All-American Pavel (who is a freshman.) They also have at least one top notch recruit coming in next year (Ben Schwarz, who I coached in high school.)

In addition to all that returning talent they have one of the best and deepest coaching staffs in AMTA (but then of course, I am biased.)

Long story short- Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[PJG2001]

How old is Buchanan Vines? How many years has he competed?

 Buchanan Vines first competed in 1767 for the then Kings College Mock Trial team. He is 352 years old, and we freeze him in the offseason to keep him fresh.....Dude, you're pretty late to this party http://www.perjuries.com/bbs/index.php/topic,4183.15.html.

[12 yr old prodigy]

Buchanan Vines first competed in 1767 for the then Kings College Mock Trial team. He is 352 years old, and we freeze him in the offseason to keep him fresh.....Dude, you're pretty late to this party http://www.perjuries.com/bbs/index.php/topic,4183.15.html.

Yea...still confused about it.

[The Gelf]

Buchanan Vines first competed in 1767 for the then Kings College Mock Trial team. He is 352 years old, and we freeze him in the offseason to keep him fresh.....Dude, you're pretty late to this party http://www.perjuries.com/bbs/index.php/topic,4183.15.html.

So he red-shirted what, like 240 years?  I always knew Buch had that cryogenic look about him.